by Wilbur Smith
However, he rose politely and smiled and shook her hand, and saw that Taffari was quite smitten by the woman. He knew that Taffari had a dozen Hita wives who were amongst the most beautiful of the tribe, but he supposed that the president was attracted by the novelty of this gross creature.
Perhaps he felt that it would add to his status to have a white woman as a plaything. However, Cheng guessed shrewdly that he would tire of her soon enough and discard her as casually as he had taken her up.
“Mr. Ning is the chief executive officer of the Ubomo Development Corporation,” Taffari told Bonny. “Technically he is your boss.”
Bonny chuckled. “Well, I can report that we are doing a hell of a job, boss.”
“I am delighted to hear that, Miss Mahon!” Cheng was unsmiling. “It is an important task that you are undertaking. What have you accomplished so far?”
“We’ve been working here in Kahali and on the lake. We’ve already filmed the site of the new hotel and casino.”
Both Cheng and Taffari listened seriously to her report. “Where are you moving to after this?” Cheng wanted to know.
“After we finish here we are driving up-country to the forest area. A place called Sengi-Sengi. Have I got that right, Your Excellency?” She looked at Taffari.
“Quite right, my dear Miss Mahon,” Taffari assured her. “Sengi-Sengi is the corporation’s pilot scheme for utilising the forest assets.”
Cheng nodded. “I will be visiting the project myself at the very first opportunity.”
“Why don’t you come up to Sengi-Sengi while we are filming?” Bonny suggested. “It would give much more weight to the production to have you in it, Mr. Ning.” She paused as another thought struck her, and then with a boyish grin she turned to Ephrem Taffari. But it would really be terrific to have you in the production, Mr. President. We could interview you on the site of the project at Sengi-Sengi. You could explain to us your hopes and dreams for your country. “Just think of that, Your Excellency.”
Ephrem Taffari smiled and shook his head. “I’m a busy man. I don’t think I could spare the time.” But she could see he was tempted. He was enough of a politician to relish the prospect of favourable exposure to a wide audience.
“It would be very valuable,” she urged him. “For both Ubomo and your personal image. People out there in the big world have heard about you only vaguely. If they could see you, it would change their whole perception. I assure you from a professional point of view that you would look plain bloody marvelous on the screen. You are tall and handsome and your voice is sensational. I swear I’d make you look like a film star.”
He liked the idea. He liked the flattery. “Well, perhaps…” They both realised that he wanted to be persuaded just a little longer.
“You could fly up to Sengi-Sengi by helicopter,” Bonny pointed out. “It would take half a day, no more…” She paused and pouted suggestively and touched his arm. “Unless, of course, you decided to stay over for a day or two. That would be okay by me, also.”
Chapter 29
Daniel and Bonny, accompanied as always by Captain Kajo, drove up from Kahah. Although it was only a little over two hundred miles it took them two full days, for much of that time was spent not in travelling but in filming the changing countryside and the rural tribes in their traditional manyattas that they found along the way.
Captain Kajo was able to smooth the way and negotiate with the tribal elders. For a few Ubomo shillings he arranged that they had the run of any of the Hita villages that they passed. They filmed the young girls at the water-holes, clad only in tiny beaded skirts as they bathed and plaited each other’s hair. The unmarried girls dressed their coiffures with a mixture of cow dung and red clay until it was an intricate sculpture on top of their heads, adding inches to their already impressive height.
They filmed the married women as they returned to the village in long files clad in flowing red matronly togas, swaying gracefully under brimming calabashes of water drawn from the spring.
They filmed the herds of dappled, multi-coloured cattle with their wide horns and humped backs against a background of flat-topped acacia and golden savanna grasslands.
They filmed the herdboys bleeding a great black bull, twisting a leather thong around its neck to raise the congested vein beneath the skin, then piercing it with the point of an arrow and capturing the scarier stream of blood in a bottle-shaped calabash. When the gourd was half filled they sealed the wound in the bull’s neck with a handful of clay, and topped up the calabash with milk stripped directly from the udder. Then they added a dash of cow’s urine to curdle the mixture into thick cheesy curds.
“Low cholesterol,” Daniel pointed out when Bonny gagged theatrically. “And look at those Hita figures.”
“I’m looking, Bonny assured him. Oh, hallelujah, I’m looking.”
The men wore only a red blanket over one shoulder, held with a belt at the waist. They allowed the skirts to flap open casually in the breeze, especially when Bonny was nearby. They let her film as much as she wished of everything they possessed, staring into the lens with masculine arrogance, the elongated loops of their earlobes stopped with bone and ivory earrings.
On the main road their Landrover passed ore trucks and logging trailers coming in the opposite direction. The weight of these massive vehicles, even though spread over a dozen axles and banks of massive tyres, rutted the road deeply and raised a fog of dust that covered the trees for a mile on both sides of the roadway with a thick coating of dark red talcum. Bonny gloried in the effect of the sunlight through the dust cloud and the shapes of the trucks lumbering out of it like prehistoric monsters.
When at last, on the second day, they crossed the river on the ferry and reached the edge of the great forests, even Bonny was awed by the height and girth of the trees. They’re like pillars holding up the sky, she breathed as she turned her camera upon them. The quality of the air and light changed as they left the dry savannah behind them and entered this humid and lush forest world.
At first they followed the main highway with its milewide open verges. Then, after fifty miles, they turned off on to one of the new development roads, freshly cut into the virgin forest. The deeper they journeyed into the forest, the closer the trees crowded the roadway, until at last their high branches met overhead and they were in a tunnel filled with dappled and greenish light.
Even the bellow of the truck engines that passed them seemed muted, as though the trees were blanketing and absorbing the alien and offensive sound. The surface of the road had been corduroyed with logs laid side by side, and over this was spread a layer of flinty gravel to give the great trucks footing.
“The returning ore trucks bring the gravel back from the quarries near the lakeshore,” Captain Kajo explained. “If they did not, the road would become a bottomless swamp of mud. It rains almost every day here. Every mile or so there were gangs of hundreds of men and women working on the road, spreading gravel and laying new logs to hold the surface together.”
“Who are they?” Daniel asked.
“Convicts,” Kajo dismissed them lightly. “Instead of spending money keeping them locked up and fed, we let them work off their debt to society.”
“A lot of convicts for such a small country,” Daniel pointed out. “You must have a lot of crime in Ubomo.”
“The Uhali are a bunch of rogues, thieves and troublemakers,” Kajo explained and then shuddered as he looked beyond the toiling lines of prisoners to the impenetrable forest behind them.
Kajo was standing in front of Daniel, obscuring him for the moment with his six foot six height. Now he moved aside, and Daniel and the field-manager confronted each other. “Mr. Chetti Singh,” Daniel said softly. “I never expected to see you again. What a great pleasure this is.”
The bearded Sikh stopped as though he had walked into a glass wall and stared at Daniel. “You know each other?” Captain Kajo asked. “What a happy coincidence.”
“We are old fri
ends,” Daniel replied. “We share a common interest in wildlife, especially elephants and leopards.” He was smiling as he extended his hand to Chetti Singh. “How are you, Mr. Singh? Last time we met you had suffered a little accident, hadn’t you?”
Chetti Singh had turned a ghastly ashen colour beneath his dark complexion, but with an obvious effort he rallied from the shock. For a moment his eyes blazed and Daniel thought he might attack him. Then he accepted Daniel’s pretence of friendliness, and tried to smile, but it was like an animal baring its teeth.
He reached out to accept Daniel’s proffered handshake, but he used his left hand. His right sleeve was empty, folded back and pinned upon itself. The blunt outline of the stump showed through the striped cotton. Daniel saw that the amputation was below the elbow. It was a typical mauling injury. The leopard would have chewed the bone into fragments that no surgeon could knit together again. Although there were no scars or other injuries apparent at a glance, Chetti Singh’s once portly body had been stripped of every ounce of superfluous fat and flesh. He was thin as an AIDS victim, and the white of his eyes had an unhealthy yellowish tinge. It was obvious that he had been through a bad time, and that he was not yet fully recovered. His beard was still thick and glossy, curled up under his chin, the ends tucked into his spotless white turban.
“Indeed, what an absolute pleasure to see you again, Doctor.” His eyes gave the lie to the words.
“Thank you for your kind sympathy, but happily I am fully recovered, except for my missing appendage.” He wiggled the stump. “It’s a nuisance, but I expect to receive full compensation for my loss from those responsible, never mind.” His touch was cool as a lizard’s skin, but he withdrew his hand from Daniel’s and turned to Bonny and Kajo.
His smile became more natural and he greeted them cordially. When he turned back to Daniel he was no longer smiling. “And so, Doctor, you have come to make us all famous with your television show. We shall all be film stars…” He was watching Daniel’s face with a strange greedy expression, like a python looking at a hare.
The shock of the meeting had been almost as great to Daniel as it had obviously been to the Sikh. Of course, Mike Hargreave had told him that Chetti Singh had survived the leopard attack, but that had been months ago and he had never expected Chetti Singh to turn up here in Ubomo, thousands of miles from where he had last seen him. Then, when he thought about it, he realised that he should really have been prepared for this.
There was a strong link between Ning Cheng Gong and the Sikh. If Ning were placed in charge in Ubomo, he would naturally appoint as his assistant somebody who knew every wrinkle of the local terrain, and who had his networks securely in place.
In retrospect, it was obvious that Chetti Singh had been the perfect choice for Ning. The Sikh’s organisation had infiltrated every country in central Africa. He had agents in the field. He knew whom to bribe and whom to intimidate. But most of all, he was totally unscrupulous and bound to Ning Cheng Gong in loyalty and fear and greed.
Daniel should have expected Chetti Singh to be lurking in Ning’s shadow, should have been prepared to face his vengeance. It did not need the expression in Chetti Singh’s eyes to warn him that he was in mortal danger. The only escape from Sengi-Sengi was along the single roadway through the forest, every mile of which was controlled by company guards and numerous military road-blocks. Chetti Singh was going to try to kill him. There could not be a single doubt of that. He had no weapon nor any other form of defence. Chetti Singh commanded the ground and could choose the time and the place to do it.
Chetti Singh had turned back and was chatting to Captain Kajo and Bonny.
“It is too late already for me to offer to show you around. It will be dark in a short while. You will want to move into the quarters we have prepared for you.” He paused and beamed at them genially. “Besides which, I have exciting news for you. I have just this minute received a fax from Government House in Kahali. President Taffari, in the very flesh, is coming to Sengi-Sengi by helicopter. He will arrive tomorrow morning and he has most graciously consented to a film interview on the site of our operation here. It is a great honour, I assure you. President Taffari is not a man to be taken lightly, and he will be accompanied by the chief executive officer of UDC, none other than our own Mr. Ning Cheng Gong. He is another eminently important personage. Perhaps he will also consent to play a part in your production.”
It was raining again as Chetti Singh’s secretary showed them to the quarters that had been set aside for them. The rain rattled like birdshot on the roofs of the buildings and the already saturated earth steamed with a mist that was blue as smoke in the twilight beneath the forest canopy.
Wooden catwalks had been laid between the buildings and the secretary provided them with cheap plastic umbrellas gaudily emblazoned with the slogan: UDC means a better life for all.
The guest quarters were a row of small rooms like stables in a long Nissen hut. Each room contained rudimentary furniture bed, chair, cupboard and desk. There was a communal washroom and lavatory in the centre of the long hut.
Daniel checked his own room carefully. The door had a lock that was so flimsy that it would yield to any determined pressure, besides which Chetti Singh certainly had a duplicate key. The window was covered by a mosquito screen and there was a mosquito net hanging above the bed, none of which was any protection. The walls were so thin that he could hear Kajo moving around in the room beside his. It was going to be a pleasant stay.
“Okay, folks, we’ll have a competition,” he grinned ruefully to himself. “Guess when Chetti Singh will make his first attempt to bump us off. “First prize is a week’s holiday at Sengi-Sengi. Second prize is two weeks holiday at Sengi-Sengi.”
Dinner was served in the mess for senior staff. It was another Nissen hut comfortably furnished as a bar and canteen. When Daniel and Bonny entered there was a mixed bag of Taiwanese and British engineers and technicians filling the mess with cigarette smoke and noisy chatter. Nobody took much notice of him, but Bonny caused a mild sensation, as usual, especially with the group of Brits playing darts and drinking lager at the bar.
The Taiwanese seemed to be keeping to themselves and Daniel sensed a tension between the two groups. This was confirmed when one of the British engineers told Daniel that since Ning had taken over UDC, he had been ousting the British engineers and managers and replacing them with his own Taiwanese.
Bonny was instantly adopted by the British contingent and after dinner Daniel left her playing darts with a couple of beefy mining engineers.
She intercepted Daniel heading for the door and she grinned at him maliciously as she whispered, “Enjoy your lonely bed, lover.” He grinned back at her as icily.
“I never did like a crowd.” As he made his way through the darkness along the slippery mud-caked catwalk, a spot in the centre of his back itched.
It was the spot into which somebody sneaking up behind him might stick a knife. He quickened his pace. When he reached the door of his room in the Nissen hut, he pushed it open but hung back for a minute. There could be somebody waiting for him in the darkened room. He gave them a chance to move before he slipped his arm around the door frame and switched on the overhead light. Only then did he venture in cautiously. He locked the flimsy door and drew the curtains and sat on the bed to unlace his boots.
There were just too many ways that Chetti Singh could choose to do it. He knew he couldn’t guard against them all. At that moment he felt something move under the bedclothes on which he was sitting. It was a slow, stealthy, reptilian sliding movement beneath the thin sheet and it touched his thigh. An icy dart of fear shot up his spine, stiffening every muscle in his body.
He had always had an unreasoning fear of snakes. One of his earliest memories was of a cobra in his nursery. It had only been a few months after his fourth birthday, but he vividly remembered the grotesque shadow that the reptile’s extended hood had thrown upon the nursery wall as it reared in the diffuse beam o
f the nightlight that his mother had placed beside his bed. He remembered the explosive hisses with which the snake had challenged his own wild and terrified screams, before his father had burst into the nursery in his pyjamas.
Now he knew with the utmost certainty that the thing beneath the sheet was a snake. He knew that Chetti Singh or one of his men had placed it there. It must be one of the more deadly species, one of the mambas, slim and glittering with their thin grinning lips, or a forest cobra, black as death, or one of the thick repulsive gaboon adders.
Daniel sprang from the bed and spun around to face it. His heart hammered wildly as he looked around for a weapon. He snatched up the flimsy chair, and with the strength of his fear tore off one of the legs. With this weapon in his hand he regained control of himself. He was still breathing rapidly and he experienced a quick rush of shame. As a game ranger he had stood down the determined charges of buffalo and elephant and the great killer cats. As a soldier he had parachuted into enemy territory and fought it out in hand-to-hand combat, but now he was panting and shaking at a phantom of his imagination.
He steeled himself to go back to the bed. With his left hand he took the corner of the sheet, raised the chair leg with the other hand and flung back the bedclothes. A striped forest mouse was in the centre of the white sheet. It had long white whiskers and its bright inquisitive button eyes blinked rapidly in the sudden light.
Daniel was barely able to arrest the blow that he had already launched at it, and he and the tiny creature stared at each other in astonishment. Then his shoulders sagged and shook with nervous laughter. The mouse squeaked and leapt off the bed. It darted across the floor and vanished into a hole in the wainscoting and Daniel collapsed on to the bed and doubled up with laughter. “My God, Chetti Singh,” he gasped. “You won’t stop at anything, will you? What other nefarious tricks have you got up your sleeve?”